Monthly Archives: March 2010

Chicago’s Only Children were first featured here on Binary with their fantastic remix of Hey Champ’s ‘Cold Dust Girl’. They’re just one of a handful of acts from the windy city that seem to be developing a real core of talented, traditionalist dance producers. These are not your average bloghouse wannabes. Between these guys and Bit Funk alone, I think the Chicago dance scene can rest easy.

I’m very excited today to be premiering the first track from their new EP. Its a very nice rework of Prince’s classic “When Doves Cry”. There’s just enough of the original in it to make people get excited, but in reality, this track is a wholly original piece. It’s built for a middle of the night groover set, and I can imagine this track getting passed around to DJs all over.

Disco flavored tracks can at times come across as very cold, as often they’re sparse and filled with icy reverb. Much like with their remix of Hey Champ, Only Children craft a track here that feels incredibly warm. I wish I had a better descriptor, but warm is just the best word here. The fat, heated bass does the trick and really pulses the song along.

I’m not sure whether or not they were going for a specific emotion or vibe here, but I think they’ve achieved a pretty unique feel with this song. They’ve managed to take Prince’s otherworldly howling, and place it within a song that is wrought with sexual tension already. The result? Well, a song that’ll make a dancefloor seem pretty desperate.

There’s a level of mystery and fantasy, mostly due to the pleading, almost primal nature of the vocals. I think the picture above completely illustrates what this feeling LOOKS like. Listening to the song I can’t help but get lost in a dream of faceless bodies, contorting around in places I’ve never been before.

Great track… Once in a while we gotta give you guys something to get everyone a little sweaty right? Go pick up the whole EP, and as I mentioned, keep your eyes out on the talent thats brewing quietly in Chicago.

TONIGHT! We’re excited to announce a new event series called The Break. Binary has teamed up with dubFrequency, Danceism, and Gotta Dance Dirty to bring together some of the brightest young stars in LA for a brand new event. We’ll be doing a bi-weekly event on the rooftop of the Standard Downtown (completely underused outside of the summertime daytime pool parties… There is NO place cooler than that rooftop at night).

The events kick off tonight, highlighted with DJ sets from ASAA, Bones, and Binary guys Alfa and LexiconDon. It promises to be a joyous kickoff night and one not to be missed.

This song feels like the right track to kick the party off. Something feels special. The air is warm, the shorts are getting shorter. Feels like time for some drug fueled aggression music. A lot of time and planning has gone into putting these groups together. Its a special collection of minds and talent, and it feels like time to let loose and celebrate what The Break is all about: Living it up in SoCal.

Heart Attack: Let it flow through your veins. Let it invade your brain. By the end of the track you’ll for sure find yourself wanting to come to the rooftop tonight. LexiconDon’s DJ sets are pretty much guaranteed to do 1 thing, put a huge smile on your face. Thats what The Break is at its core. Losing the pretentiousness thats all over LA and just get back to the basics of good people, good fun, and good music.

We’re in Miami tonight, and really excited about playing a show as NightWaves with some really great up and coming acts. WVUM and NightDrive productions are putting on a show during the WMC festivities for all those people that aren’t so interested in raving out. NightWaves will be performing alongside Nite Jewel, Tanlines, and MillionYoung. You can get all of the details by going to the Facebook invite.

Miami feels like a natural home for us. This environment inspired a lot of our sound and style. While SoCal has a lot of these elements, there’s something about Florida that captures the romantic, tropical spirit that NightWaves embodies. I’m thinking its going to be a special show.

A cut from their EP. This Memoryhouse track ‘The Waves’ is the perfect soundtrack to the last 2 days of my life. We’re back on the road, heading from Austin to Miami for our show tomorrow night, and the drive has been nothing but dreamlike. Memoryhouse is a part of a group of bands and people that we seem to be more and more intertwined with, so it seems fit to do a post about them. We posted a remix that MillionYoung did for them, and ever since, its felt as if all of our paths were leading in the same direction. Oddly enough, I’ve had this song sitting in my ‘to blog’ list for quite some time. Only when I heard it as the sun rose yesterday did I feel like I had to write about it right away. It was all just too beautiful of a moment to pass up.

If you don’t have the EP, please go find a way to support Memoryhouse, they are a real talent that I expect to be hearing a lot more of soon. Hit them up on myspace.

Why this song? Because it reminds me of taking weekend trips to Cape Cod with my father when I was young. I rarely hung out with kids from my school when I was young. Every weekend I would get into his beat up Toyota Celica and we would drive the hour long drive to the Cape. We’d get on our small sailboat Ashtabula, and he’d take me out into Buzzards Bay and teach me to sail. We’d sail to various harbors around the bay and stay for the weekend, returning back home on Sunday night. We did this on almost every weekend we could (weather permitting) until I was almost in high school. Looking back this is a little odd, but it felt pretty normal at the time. Every kid had a different life, this was just mine.

What those weekends gave me though, was a hell of a lot of time in the car, and on the boat, to daydream. I think I listened to my Nirvana – Nevermind cassette so many times that Territorial Pissings actually started to sound like Territorial Pissings. There wasnt much to do but listen to music, read, and think. And so I thought a lot. Usually about whichever girl I was madly in love with at the time.

This brings me back to this roadtrip, and most roadtrips for that matter. They ALWAYS put me back into that mindset. There’s nothing like a long carride during the daytime to blur the lines between the waking and sleep world. Dreams become more lucid and hopes and wishes become more emotional and real. Falling asleep and dreaming about a pretty girl that I miss… or a girl from a time long ago… or one that doesn’t exist… its something I do a lot.

This roadtrip just seemed to be a one long daydream. A tangled mess of sweet smelling hair, sunkissed skin, and soft eyes. Sometimes you wake up with an ache in your stomach just because you’ve just lost something that wasn’t even there. I can try my best to describe it, but I suspect that you know exactly what I’m talking about. A 10 second glimpse of a girl at a truck stop can be life changing on the road, when you’re stuck in sleep purgatory.

Now… This song right here, sounds exactly like what sleep purgatory feels like.

Well, we are in Austin for SXSW right now. I wish I could write a bit more about the songs I’ll be posting, but realistically, thats just not doable. There’s far too much music, tacos, and beer to consume.

Binary is in Austin though. FULL FORCE. If you’re wondering what we’re up to, please head on over here, where you can see all of our shows.

A quick note about Lovelife. He’s a former member of Ghosthustler, which was a band that was one of the first bands that took Kyle and I on the long musical journey that we started a few years ago. This song is pretty great. It makes me feel warm.

Keenhouse, LexiconDon, NightWaves, and Short Circuit have hit the 10 and we’re blasting eastwards towards TX. Destination, Austin, for the best week of music in the world. Also known as SWSW.

We’ll let you know later this week all of the exciting show’s we’ll be playing, but today we’d like to announce a special party we’re involved in on Saturday. We’ve teamed up with Guns in the Sun and our good compadres from New York, Famous Friends.

We’ve got a great day of music, food trucks, and the kicker is that all bar proceeds going to a charity that reaches out to underprivileged kids so they can go to summer camp. The best part? Its FREE. It’s Saturday, March 20. It has the best name of any party in Austin “The Disco Brisket”, and lastly, the party features a tremendous line-up. No reason to miss it. You don’t even need to RSVP (but you definitely should check out the facebook event)

Well, its Friday night and we’re all in the mood to get down and dirty tonight. Binary is taking off for SXSW on Monday, so to kick it off, dubFrequency was kind enough to throw us a kickoff party at The Standard in Hollywood Tonight. DJ Sets from Keenhouse, Alfa, Short Circuit, and LexiconDon are sure to keep things moving all night. Plus that also means all the rest of us are freed up to pour champagne on Dillon’s head for his birthday. (Dillon was the brainchild behind our wonderful new website).

So, to celebrate, why not post the biggest party track of 2010. Russ Chimes, one of the first artists that we ever fell in love with from this movement, may have topped all of his other productions in one fell swoop with his remix of Starry Eyed. It got all of the adoration it deserved on the blogs, and was even so big that a big name DJ accused him of stealing the buildup riff (that’s definitely the best indicator you did a great job).

In any case, I’m really hoping I’ll hear this remix played out tonight. It represents everything I love about the heavy side of electro. Its still melodic, and it uses melody to create buildups, not just sweeps and kick rolls. Russ is so immediately recognizable, and his production methods leave an indelible watermark on every remix.

This one is for getting wet and wild. For partying in purple lit rooms full of mirrors. For wearing some sunglasses inside, and for not worrying about driving to the airport at 6am.

Penguin Prison, someone we covered here a couple of months ago, represents everything we stand for here at Binary. From our small beginnings in late 2007, Binary has always worshiped at the shrine of ‘the song’. In our minds, nothing beats great songwriting. Fads pass. ‘Sounds’ and production methods shift and change and disappear. What never dies is a great song. As we started to sign artists to our own roster, this was the rule we always came back to. Yes, they SOUND good, but do they write great songs?

My personal test is always… could this song be taken out of context and covered with an acoustic guitar and still work? If it can’t, then Im sorry… somethings missing. Heard some of the amazing covers of Daft Punk songs off of Discovery? Yes… This is why that album is so good. Those guys understand great songwriting.

So this brings us to Penguin Prison, and act that would fit well within our Binary family. Taking clean, sharp electronic production, and applying it to great songwriting. His latest offering, Something I’m Not, may be his best song to date. It’s been in my ‘Go-To’ playlist for quite a while now, and while we’re late bringing it to you, this song deserves to be on this blog. Its just the right fit.

Dealing with crazy people can be pretty tough sometimes. Sometimes we become ‘something we’re not’. You exit your skin and just do things that you can’t explain. Everyone gets that way. Maybe its your girlfriend, wild eyed, makeup streaked, screaming at you at 4am. Maybe its your best friend, telling you things you could never imagine him saying… Or maybe its you, locking eyes with someone across the room. And all of a sudden nothing else matters. You’ll become something, anything, to get them.

This song puts me right there. In the nether regions of space and time. Those 3am moments when the world doesn’t even seem to exist. Don’t you feel this way sometimes? It’s as if whats going on right here and now will just disappear tomorrow. Actual life becomes a dream, and people just aren’t the same they were just a few hours ago.

Eyes pierce through fog. The brief flash of a touch of skin on skin creates a frenzy.

This song just puts me there… Its entrancing, thick and foggy…

Whether its someone just stepping outside of their heads and going crazy. You’ve seen it. Maybe its been you. This song is that soundtrack. You might not be making any sense. Shit, I don’t think I’m making much sense writing it. But that feels like this was the song’s aim.

Velcro City Records latest release, a collaboration between Oh Shit! and Night Drugs, on paper looks like something Binary might put out. Remixes from Bit Funk, Diamond Cut, The Phantoms Revenge, and Binary artistFabian highlight the release. The original is bangin, and all the remixes take the song in a new direction. Today we’ve got our two favorite remixes from the release. One being Fabian’s, the other Bit Funk’s. Definitely head over to VCR’s website to find out how you can purchase the release. The song is really a killer, and all of the remixes are worthy of your dollar.

Fabian’s sort of feels like a little story to me. Like a bedtime story, followed by a dream. Its like you’re being sung to sleep. ‘Everybody needs someone to make them feel alright… Look into their eyes…. I look around the room and all I can see is you.’

The verse pulses along, and then before you know it, it drops away and the last words fade into a filter. When the chorus finally hits, its as if you’ve been transplanted into a dream, where all the words you just heard have come true. The emotion of the lyrics hadn’t necessarily set in yet… but once the song fully drops, its like being thrown into exactly that situation. Its almost like ‘looking into their eyes’ for the first time. The song just OPENS UP. Really great stuff.

On top of that, it’ll really get you moving. While we were on our way up the coast of California on our Pacific Lights Tour, I remember listening to a rough draft of this remix over and over and over again while mountains passed us by. A great memory that just brings up a whole range of emotions for me.

Seriously, just sit back and wait for the full drop here. You’ll feel it.

Oh Shit! & Night Drugs – Everybody Needs (Bit Funk Remix)Heart This Song On Hypem
Bit Funk gets a little spacier, a little more dreamy with his take. It’s emerged as a favorite of mine, and I have it on a mix thats in my car right now. His version is much grander than Fabian’s, and puts a new twist on the song with some talkboxed vocals. Its Bit Funk through and through. I really love that he’s developing a signature sound. People are taking notice, and I definitely think its only a matter of time before we’re going to start hearing some seriously high profile remixes from him. I’m super proud that our blog was one of the first to write about him.

As usual, its a nice large buildup that’s the highlight of the remix. Finishing with the drop at 3:04, its like being launched into the clouds on a cold day.

A great couple of remixes, and a seriously solid release from the guys over at Velcro City. Watch out for Fabian’s Beatport Chart, coming up soon!